Why you should always report it to the event organizer
It is Sunday morning and I just bumped into this post on a salsa forum. I felt yhr urge to share this with you to create more awareness about this topic and next to that I was wondering what you would suggest to remedy it.
This lady was at a salsa party in the north of United States. She had just finished a dance and was resting on the side of the dance floor. A man came to ask her to dance, and she said
“No thank you” as politely and nicely as she could. According to her she said no because she saw him dance and he seemed rough and because she got a “bad vibe” from him
The interaction went as follows:
Him: “Why?”
Her: (smiling): “I don’t have to explain.”
Him: “You’re s***!”
Her: “is a lady is not allowed to say no to a dance? Maybe I’m tired.”
(calmly and smiling, and silently thanking my intuition for saving me from dancing with this “lovely” guy
Him: continues with the insults and bad words, then walks away
This is clearly not the way we treat each other in this scene.
So this lady went up to the organisers and DJ’s at the party and they had a talk with this “rude” guy.
According to her words she decided that not saying anything meant she was condoning and enabling this guy’s behavior. This will allow him to make this a place where it is okay for women to be treated like this.
So she eventually talk to one of the DJ’s. This upset him and promised to take action on it. Rude guys should either stop this behavior or they will be banned from the party. Before she left, she saw him talking to the guy.
The moral of this story is. “Always” report people that act in such a threatening and disrespectful manner. Even if you are prepared to forget about the incident. Why? Think about the fact that they are surely going to act like that with other women.
Same for guys: if a woman tells you a man acted like this with her when she rejected his invitation, ask her if she would feel comfortable reporting it to the organizer. If she says no, perhaps offer to accompany her or to report the guy yourself. The more we all stick together, the more we’ll help ensure our dance scenes remain places of joy rather than of intimidation and fear!
So my question to you is. Have you ever experienced something like this before? And how did you resolve it?
